San Francisco Performances
scored major coup last week in bringing one of Europe's most acclaimed
experimental companies, the Cullberg Ballet, to Yerba Buena's Center
for the Arts with Mats Ek's post-modern Swan Lake.

The company has
been performing this trademark ballet for almost fifteen years now,
so it's probably understandable that they're ready to move on to new
works, especially with new artistic director Johann Inger coming in
next year. Nevertheless, while it may be old hat in Europe, and perhaps
eclipsed by the slightly flashier version by Matthew Bourne, this Swan
Lake, choreographed by Ek in 1987, has both a subtle moodiness and
fanciful inventiveness.

Reams and reams
have already been written about the bald-headed swans of indeterminate
gender, about the Manichean undertones and Freudian leanings of the
revamped story, but less has been made of Ek's warm affection for the
old classics of ballet. Far from savaging the story or being an anti-ballet,
Ek's Swan Lake references the work with more gentle pokes at
ballet conventionality, rather than a denunciation of classicism. It
is an examination of the ballet with modern eyes and a modern sense
of humor, about as deconstructionist as Mark Morris's The Hard Nut,
and rich with imagery and beautifully-realized passages.

Classicism is inherent
in the backgrounds of the Cullberg dancers. After all, one can't do
a proper take-off of something unless you first understand it, and these
dancers have clearly brought comprehensive ballet training to their
roles as well as grounded modern technique. To all of this Ek adds in
a darker dramatic element that is pared down, intense and faintly disturbing.

Many critiques this
year and last year from London emphasized the dated-ness of certain
elements of the production as if that were news, but anything can look
dated to a certain degree. The fact is, now we may be used to seeing
male swans or broad, Lichtenstein-esque backdrops for humorous parodies
of old war-horse ballets, but that doesn't detract from either the quality
of his choreography or the fact that his Swan Lake came first,
before Matthew Bourne, before Mark Morris.

It is no easy thing
to re-engineer the arrangement of a ballet that has been so firmly entrenched
in the minds of dance-goers, but setting aside any preconceptions, his
choreography uses the music brilliantly. Even within his new paradigm
though, there are small gestures that hark back to the more familiar
versions of Swan Lake. The swans enter from under the backdrop
in a lengthy split that recalls the famous split jeté entrance
that the Swan Queen makes in the Ivanov choreography. The beautiful
White Swan Adagio, which often begins with Odette fluttering to the
floor in front of Siegfried and him gently lifting her up, instead starts
with the Prince on the floor in front of the swan, and her dancing around
him instead.

The Prince seems
to be the missing link between the old and new, between classical ballet,
as we've come to think of it, and theatrical modernism. Ek's characters
often evince a loneliness and he has the knack of showing alienation
and dejection well, as in the slumped shoulders and heavy walks seen
throughout his Giselle. As played by Carl Inger, in his Hamlet-inspired
doublet and tights, Siegfried is a Romantic, albeit feckless, hero,
in the cast of Goethe's Werther, sorrowing over... well, probably even
he isn't sure what he's sorrowing over. The only character sporting
his own head of hair, the prince is also the only real sexual naïf
on the stage. He's like a leftover from the nineteenth century who has
stumbled into the modern world and is now stuck with contemplating a
large dollop of Cool Whip instead of a skull. In the midst of angular
jarring and melting modern steps and fluidly musical small gestures,
Inger pulls out a perfect double attitude pirouette as if he can't help
himself.

The preening swans,
in a more modern, pragmatic depiction, moved not like swans on water,
but like swans on land, waddling and ungainly. Even so, Julie Guibert,
as Odette, the Swan Queen, displayed a grace and mobility that set her
a cut above the rest of the swans. When she nestles against the Prince's
back, the sensuality was both touching and lovely.

The skullcaps manage
to make most of the characters androgynous, even mannish, adding perhaps,
to the Prince's confusion over gender identities and sexual roles. In
her red dress, however, Lisa Drake, as the Queen, could hardly be mistaken
for a guy. Looking a little like Lady Jessica of the Bene Gesserit in
Frank Herbert's Dune, the prince's apparently single mom tore
through her scenes, and her son's life, with a savage gusto. Her spicy
pas de deux with a lover, danced with a sinister restraint by Eytan
Sivak and set to the Black Swan coda music, was one of the most delicious
episodes of the ballet. Was she just having fun, or was it a perverse
sexual lesson for the Prince?

A knowing sort of
comic relief was supplied by the three jesters, danced by Johanna Lindh,
Sawako Iseki and Alexandra Campbell. It is this trio that dances the
satisfying reinterpretation of the show-stopping second act pas de quatre
for the four little swans. Sometimes servants, but sometimes Chorus,
or even Three Fates, the jesters served both to comment on and also
to drive the dreams of the prince as they swung around hoses spewing
out dream-mist and engulfed him in the bizarre and often mocking swan-world.

The prince's Hero-Journey
in the third act was about as contrived as the usual third act divertissements
are, with a peculiar assortment of locales: Russia, Israel and Spain.
What we are to make of those choices, I do not know. The most striking
imagery built into the Black Swan scenes however, was the mysterious
black figures gliding (dare I say "swan-like"?) across the
stage. These silent observers add an element that recalls the theatricality
that Ek's countryman, Ingmar Bergman, has brought to productions of
plays like Maria Stuart and Hamlet for the Royal Dramatic
Theater of Sweden, in which characters wander at the fringes of the
main action, intently watching and, one thinks, forming opinions that
will shape the final outcome of the work.

The opening night
performance was also marked by a gala for San Francisco Performances,
adding an extra element of pomp to the evening. Processions, games,
galas, dressing up, which was the more surreal? The entrance of the
courtiers onstage or the entrance of the partygoers in formalwear who
came from the gala dinner at the Forum prompting the curtain to go up
almost a half an hour late? The eighteen dancers, who performed the
work with unflagging enthusiasm (particularly Inger, who is onstage
almost the entire time) seemed to take it all in stride and gave a rousing
performance and the audience loved it. Perhaps they were put instantly
in the proper festive mood by the pre-curtain announcement that the
San Francisco Giants had won Game Four of the World Series, 4-3, that
evening. If only the Giants had had as much stamina and finesse as the
Cullberg Ballet.